Cookout

Action Worship Center, 9805 Lyon Ave. in North Laurel, invites the community to its annual cookout on Sunday, July 22, immediately following the 9 a.m. worship service. There will be games, moon bounces and plenty of food. For more information, call the church office at 301-498-7501.

Family and friends of slain bus driver Craig Ray Jr. gathered Saturday for a cookout at Druid Hill Park to keep his memory alive five months after he was killed and a week before he would have turned 35 years old. "Even in death he's still bringing people together," said Ray's grandmother, Barbara "Granny" Mallory. Silver balloon letters spelling C-R-A-I-G bobbed in the warm breeze blowing up the hillside from the lake. Fluttering orange tablecloths covered picnic tables where Craig's parents, siblings, high school pals and relatives sat eating burgers, ribs, corn and other food and shook their heads at what many in attendance called his senseless murder.

Family and friends of slain bus driver Craig Ray Jr. gathered Saturday for a cookout at Druid Hill Park to keep his memory alive five months after he was killed and a week before he would have turned 35 years old. "Even in death he's still bringing people together," said Ray's grandmother, Barbara "Granny" Mallory. Silver balloon letters spelling C-R-A-I-G bobbed in the warm breeze blowing up the hillside from the lake. Fluttering orange tablecloths covered picnic tables where Craig's parents, siblings, high school pals and relatives sat eating burgers, ribs, corn and other food and shook their heads at what many in attendance called his senseless murder.

Folks ready to fire up their outdoor grill on Memorial Day face a deadly choice of inflicting food poisoning or cancer on family and friends: food poisoning by E. coli and Salmonella bacteria, if they under-cook the meat; cancer, if they heat meat to the point of creating cancer-causing compounds. Luckily, a bunch of enterprising food manufacturers and processors have met this challenge head-on by developing a great variety of healthful, delicious and convenient, un-chicken, veggie burgers and soy dogs.

By Justin Fenton and Justin Fenton,justin.fenton@baltsun.com | August 26, 2009

Stephen "J.R." Blackwell Jr. is apparently getting tired of the extra police attention. Blackwell, 25, who police say is a major drug kingpin on the city's east side but who has not been arrested since age 17, was charged with disorderly conduct Monday night in East Baltimore after being approached by police for a field interview. According to court records, Blackwell became "loud and belligerent" and yelled, "[Expletive] you all. I'm going to make it very hard on the police around here."

Folks ready to fire up their outdoor grill on Memorial Day face a deadly choice of inflicting food poisoning or cancer on family and friends: food poisoning by E. coli and Salmonella bacteria, if they under-cook the meat; cancer, if they heat meat to the point of creating cancer-causing compounds. Luckily, a bunch of enterprising food manufacturers and processors have met this challenge head-on by developing a great variety of healthful, delicious and convenient, un-chicken, veggie burgers and soy dogs.

A Woodlawn man was charged Tuesday with fatally shooting his neighbor, saying he felt "disrespected" when the victim left a Sunday cookout early, according to charging documents. Police said Brandon Jerome Stanfield, 30, shot and killed Michael Jefferson Jr., 39, inside his home on Rocky Brook Court after Jefferson left a cookout before Stanfield's family arrived, one witness told police, according to documents filed in Baltimore County District Court. Officers found Jefferson dead from multiple gunshot wounds inside his home shortly after midnight Monday after receiving reports of shots fired.

A 20-year-old man is scheduled to be sentenced to prison next month after being convicted last week of killing a man who was attending a cookout two years ago in Northeast Baltimore, according to the city's state's attorney's office. Jordan Jennings was found guilty Friday of first-degree murder and gun charges by a Baltimore Circuit Court jury whose members heard 12 days of testimony. Prosecutors said he robbed two people who had stepped outside the party to use their cellphones on a porch.

A welcome-home barbecue for a Govans serviceman back from Army duty in Saudi Arabia ended with his relatives running from their backyard last night to avoid a shower of glass from windows exploding in their burning house.The three-alarm fire at the Beaumont Street home of Army Spc. James T. Hawkins, 27, started at 7:34 p.m. as about 20 friends and relatives of the Desert Storm veteran were gathered to pick steamed crabs and eat hamburgers."One of my friends walked by and said: 'It's a fire,' " said Bettye Cain Blaize, 39, a guest at the cookout.

Shepherd's Staff, an ecumenical ministry to the needy, invites the community to a cookout today to celebrate the Fourth of July."We are calling this a picnic for people who don't have a back yard of their own," said Kathy Brown, Shepherd's Staff director. "This is not a soup kitchen. It is a cookout."Westminster churches operate soup kitchens every day, but the lunch giveaway is often canceled on holidays. Since 1996, members of Cedarhurst Universal Unitarian Church in Finksburg have offered the barbecue in place of the soup kitchen.

A Woodlawn man was charged Tuesday with fatally shooting his neighbor, saying he felt "disrespected" when the victim left a Sunday cookout early, according to charging documents. Police said Brandon Jerome Stanfield, 30, shot and killed Michael Jefferson Jr., 39, inside his home on Rocky Brook Court after Jefferson left a cookout before Stanfield's family arrived, one witness told police, according to documents filed in Baltimore County District Court. Officers found Jefferson dead from multiple gunshot wounds inside his home shortly after midnight Monday after receiving reports of shots fired.

My parents grew up about a mile-and-a-half and a cultural universe away from one another in Depression-era southeast Baltimore. Dad was a paperboy in a largely Italian and German section of Highlandtown long ago called "the Hill" and now known as Greektown. Mom, whose mother was a textile worker and the family breadwinner, came from an almost monolithic Polish colony along Boston Street, a neighborhood of broom factories, lumberyards and canneries remembered as "old" Canton. Because it was Baltimore, the neighborhoods had one fundamental cuisine in common: Chesapeake Bay blue crabs, both plentiful and reasonably priced.

Over the years, chef Martin Saylor of Coastal Sunbelt Produce Company in Savage has served crab salad rolls and rockfish imperial with tomato jam at Gov. Martin O'Malley's annual Buy Local Challenge Cookout. When the annual event convenes July 25 in Annapolis, his offerings will be on the menu again - this time Chesapeake crab cakes with corncakes and Eastern Shore melon relish. Saylor is confident he will have at least one fan: the governor's wife, Katie Curran O'Malley. "The first lady has been really supportive," Saylor chuckled.

Daphne Alston understands why so many people are outraged by the killing of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed Florida teen shot by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman. She just doesn't get why nobody seems to care about the deaths of many other unarmed young men - especially those in similar situations closer to home, such as Christopher Brown, 17, who died in an altercation with a Baltimore County police officer. "We took buses, trains and helicopters to get down to Florida, because there was another nationality that was against us," Alston said Sunday, referring to the Martin case.

The Fourth of July is not technically about the inalienable right to grill hot dogs and burgers, but to vegetarians or people trying to cut down on their meat intake, it can sure seem that way. For those looking for a way to join in the backyard grilling without making a trip to the butcher shop first, local chefs say never fear: grilled veggies can make delicious and filling entrees. "I love cooking on the grill," said Taueret Thomas, culinary director for the Lincoln Culinary Institute in Columbia.

Whether you're barbecuing in Baltimore, in Bel Air or on the bay this Memorial Day, you will pay more for staple foods because our federal government continues to pit food versus fuel. Thanks to an unworkable federal energy policy, prices for animal feed have soared, burdening those farmers and ranchers that raise livestock and poultry, along with the companies that process them, with rising production costs. In addition to forcing farms and food producers to cut jobs or close their doors, the increased costs are reflected in the expanding grocery bills of every American.

This has been a winter more like a spring and, sometimes more like a summer. Perhaps the February thaw came early and stayed. Or fall never ended or spring is officially eternal. Whatever the cause of February's intemperately temperate temperatures, it furnished the perfect night for a cookout, complete with a moonlit game of horseshoes and marshmallows roasted over a campfire. Edgewater hostess Linda Krone and her husband, Billy, have a good-time reputation sealed long ago, when cookouts meant marinated chicken breasts for the grown-ups and hot dogs for the kids.

By Justin Fenton and Justin Fenton,justin.fenton@baltsun.com | August 1, 2009

Police have charged a 20-year-old man in connection with a fatal shooting that might have ties to Sunday's shooting of 12 people at an East Baltimore cookout, according to law enforcement sources. Brandon K. Brown was arrested Friday and charged in a double shooting July 19 that killed 16-year-old Jerrod Reed, police confirmed. Reed, who had no criminal record, was hit in the head by a bullet while standing on an East Baltimore corner, Kenwood Avenue and Madison Street, a few blocks from where he lived with relatives.

When it comes to Erika Brannock, a Cockeysville resident who lost her lower left leg in the Boston Marathon bombing, and Brannock's mother, Carol Downing, the staff at Graul's Market in Hereford consider them part of the family. Brannock, a preschool teacher at Trinity Episcopal Children's Center, in Towson, worked in the store's deli department while she was in college and grad school, and she still keeps in close touch with her former co-workers. "Erika worked here for six and a half years before she became a teacher," said store manager Ken Bullen.

This week, the chefs leave the comfy confines of their climate controlled Vegas kitchen for a more rustic setting. But first, Curtis introduces the Quickfire by revealing a huge salad bar that the chefs will use to compose a salad. "Here's your salad bar," he says. "It's as big as a whale. And you've got eight minutes to make it set sail. " The chefs dash into the challenge horrified at the short time limit, without getting his musical reference. Der. Eight minutes is indeed a crazy short time, and they are more frenzied than normal.